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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28777089">phantom lines</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/madburymangler/pseuds/madburymangler'>madburymangler</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Phantom Touch [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dungeons &amp; Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Euostrath's Descent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Food as a Metaphor for Love, Love, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Original Slash, Original Universe, Other, Reincarnation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:47:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>543</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28777089</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/madburymangler/pseuds/madburymangler</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>how to consume: a nyke guide</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Iketasos/Nyleein</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Phantom Touch [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108832</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>phantom lines</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aconitumi/gifts">Aconitumi</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Iketasos belongs to @larkspureee on Twitter, and Nyleein to her DM</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To eat a pomegranate, one must be gentle.</p><p>Some choose to cut the fruit in half and damn the consequences, uncaring if seeds spill out and burst before they can reach the pleasure of the tongue. To Iketasos, this is foolish, a waste of a precious gift. It is flesh and blood, the seeds ripe and full. It is more they have ever hoped to ask for.</p><p>It is a promise to love and be loved forever.</p><p>So they cut it off from the bottom, delicate and sensual, then deprive it of its crown. It is love incarnate when they cut into it, when they cut into <em>him,</em> because it is not Nyleein's flesh they seek for the sake of it, delectable though he may be. It is what lies beneath, in the marrow and the blood, and when the seeds of the pomegranate fizz on their tongue in bittersweet ecstasy, they know what is to taste breath in its purest form, remember black and bitter fluid smearing across their lips and sweet meat on their tongue.</p><p>The ruby-red juice of the pomegranate tastes like Nyleein's tears when he'd begged them for a forgiveness he did not believe in.</p><p>When they finish, they take the apple that had been left for them by their melancholy lover and listen to the crisp crunch as the skin and flesh give way.</p><p>The sweetness tastes like their hands against his when they told him it would all be okay.</p><p>Love is, perhaps, not the easiest of ideals for a creature like them, not when it is so easily manipulated, not when they have built fragments of it with puppet strings tied on every finger, but with a twist of their wrist, the pomegranate opens, seeds spilling out like gemstones, and they hunger for it - for <em>him</em> - all the same.</p>
<hr/><p>To eat a pomegranate, one must be careful.</p><p>It is not enough to want it, to desire the wine-sweet secrets that slumber beneath the surface. No, to taste every inch, every crystalline seed, one must treat it with the reverence it deserves.</p><p>For Nyleein, it is much the same with Iketasos.</p><p>He is a hungry creature, shaped that way by the fate he tries so hard to bend, and he seeks them out with fangs bared, mapping every inch of their body with his eyes closed and eyeteeth at the ready.</p><p>If he were blind, he would still know them by sight.</p><p>When he cuts open the pomegranate left on his table, the one that had not yet been there when he had gone to bathe, it is with the most precision he can manage with shaking hands. He tries to pry it open, but he has not cut deep enough; there is a line he is terribly afraid of crossing.</p><p>To see him like this, Iketasos would laugh and throw out some devastatingly charming quip, one that would make him love them even more.</p><p>Love should not be the easiest of ideals for a beast like him, not when he is raw and unfettered, when his canines ache for meat to sink into and his lungs sing to be consumed in return, but he's worked the pomegranate open now, and he has never wanted anything more.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i'm on twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/akschoene">here</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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